Tetherd Cow Ahead

Police in Broome, in northern Western Australia, are on the lookout for five stolen lamb shanks after learning the meat has previously been injected with drugs.

The lamb shanks were stolen from a bar fridge outside the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service Council in Broome.

They were being used to train Aboriginal health workers and had been injected with anaesthetic and stitched.

The officer in charge, Darren Seivwright, says 55 millilitres of the drug Lignocaine has been injected into the meat and could be fatal if consumed.

“They’re pretty easily identifiable, they’ve got stitches in them. So if someone offers you a lamb shank that’s got stitches in them, then my strongest advice would be to stay away and if you’ve already consumed them, then I suggest you get yourself to the hospital,” he said.

I’ve had some offputting meals in my travels out west, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t really need Officer Seivwright’s advice to ‘stay away’ if offered lamb shanks with stitches in them…

UPDATE: A few moments ago it occurred to me that we might have a Half a Bladder situation with this story. Specifically, why were the lamb shanks injected with anaesthetic? Think about it: trainees practicing their sutures on some lamb legs, fair enough, but what the hell were they doing injecting Lignocaine into them? It’s not like the deceased lambykin legs were going to feel any pain or anything. And if it was just to hone injection skills, why use (presumably costly) drugs? Why not just use water? Hmmm?

I think there is more here than meats the eye.

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Thanks to Nurse Myra for reminding me of this story (which I heard on the radio yesterday, but forgot…)

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A new anthology of short stories from onetime ‘cyberpunk’¹ science fiction writer and green design visionary Bruce Sterling is due to be released by Subterranean Press this September.

Anything from Bruce is well worth reading, but the very special thing about this particular book (well, as far as I’m concerned anyway) is that the cover features one of my mathematically articulated images.

This image, called Red Portal is from my Complex Systems #1 inventions.

You can read a little more about my images, how they are made, and the creative philosophies behind them in this post, and see my galleries here.

Congratulations Bruce!

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¹I’m sure he really hates that term these days…

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I really don’t know what to add.

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This image from the great public domain resource at the Northwestern University Library

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Today it is three years since my beautiful Kate left this place. I’m thinking of you buddy. Rest in peace my love.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab are specialists in creating perfumes with a dark, romantic Gothic tone. Their site says “Our scents run the aesthetic gamut of magickal, pagan and mythological blends, Renaissance, Medieval and Victorian formulas, and horror/Gothic-themed…“

You will find amongst their range Funereal Oils, Voodoo Blends and a set of perfumes intriguingly titled Carnival Diabolique.

For the true geeks of the horror domain though, the parfum de choix must surely be their Picnic in Arkham line, a collection based on the works of the great horror master H.P. Lovecraft. Offerings in this set include Cthulhu, Night Gaunt and R’lyeh and a miscellany of enigmatic others.

I’m really hoping that they are not too literal to the Lovecraft ouvre since I can’t see much demand for fragrances based on rotting fish and seaweed. R’lyeh is described as “A hellishly dark aquatic scent, evocative of fathomless oceanic deeps, the mysteries of madness buried under crushing black waters, and the brooding eternal evil that lies beneath the waves“.

It may be a measure of the magnitude of the loss of my sanity, but I really want to be able to go around smelling like that.

I don’t think there’s too much fear of reeking like a fishmonger’s cart though, if the seductive profiles of some of the other perfumes are anything to go by. Shub-Niggurath is spruiked as “A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices” and Miskatonic University sounds very appealing as “The scent of Irish coffee, dusty tomes and polished oakwood halls“.

Of course if Lovecraft himself had written the copy, his concise description of the fragrance of something like Azathoth would inevitably have been simply ‘Indescribable’.

I can’t tell you how much I want to try these perfumes. Unfortunately Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab doesn’t sell outside the US.

I don’t think the Elder Gods will look too kindly on that.

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Thanks to Universal Head for pointing me to Black Phoenix!

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The Continuing Misfortunes of Simple Graphics Man ~

#18: The Risky Rays.

In this episode, SGM finds himself appearing on behalf of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Organization for Standardization in their newly developed ionizing radiation warning symbol.

The unmistakable message of this warning must surely be: If you can read this sign, hoof it buster or you’ll end up as an emblem on a pirate flag.

There’s not a great likelihood that you might be mistaking the symbol as something jolly¹, I’ll give them that.

I don’t see a good outcome for SGM.

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¹Unless it’s a Jolly Roger, obviously

This via jedimacfan via Engadget. Thanks Team Cow!

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I know you have all been waiting breathlessly for the second stop in the Bad Public Art Tour of Sydney and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed as we pull over here in Kings Cross just east of the city centre. Cameras on the ready?

This nine year old piece is one of the more controversial on our tour, and the controversy continues even to this day. Unveiled in 1998 to howls of outrage, sculptor Ken Unsworth’s ‘Stones Against the Sky’ quickly earned the alternative title ‘Poo On Sticks’.

There’s no getting around it. This is a monumentally ugly sculpture. If you have some idea of Unsworth’s other work, you can see what the general object was, but it has to be said that here he has failed spectacularly. In Unsworth’s defense, there was evidently an original plan for the sculpture to be sited among straight-trunked trees, and perhaps that might have mitigated the awful spectacle somewhat. Outside that context, however, it is one of the city’s more miserable artistic tragedies.

I have to admit that I am in general a big admirer of Unsworth’s work. He makes art that is whimsical, challenging and humorous and I would place him halfway along a sliding scale between Andy Goldsworthy and Len Lye. His wonderful ‘Suspended Stone Circle II’, in permanent exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is a delightful achievement, and the illusion of the weightlessness of its large smooth river stones is at once impressive and charming.

Sadly though, ‘Poo On Sticks’ is likely to be the most widely encountered of Ken Unsworth’s creations, situated as it is in one of Sydney’s busiest centres. As I mentioned, the controversy over the piece continues. It has in recent times come under threat of urban terrorism¹ and not too long ago it was clandestinely, and, I believe, with no consultation with the artist, given a drab coat of slate-grey paint (admittedly this does have the effect of removing the resemblance to big lumps of excrement, the boulders having been originally painted a shade of turd brown, but it does absolutely nothing to ameliorate the hideousness).

The moral to this story – when creating works for public display first ask yourself this question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how close is my work to the physical resemblance of bodily waste?”

If you’re pushing 6, start again.

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¹A group of art students calling themselves the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places threatened to destroy the work (and no – I am not affiliated with this movement…)

Photographs ©Ginger Stick 2007 – thanks Cissy Strutt

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In a reasonably crowded shopping mall this morning, man talking loudly on mobile phone:

Hey Mike, what’s the entry code for the Nelson Street Studio?¹ No. Yeah. Uh-huh. No – Nelson Street. Annandale. Across the road from the church. Yeah? 4523? OK. Great! Thanks.

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¹The details of this exchange have been altered to protect the dimwitted.

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Valentine’s Day 1961. Morty Crepe makes final adjustments immediately prior to the launch of the ambitious, yet ultimately fatally miscalculated Love Potion #8.

He never showed his face in public again.

I bought these ‘pesto’ scones for lunch today. They taste really good.

But now I’m wondering how I tell if they go mouldy…